Looks like Intelligent Systems decided to give us a treat this Halloween with a brand new Legendary Hero from my favorite game in the entire Fire Emblem franchise.

While the Brave Redux banner with Loki, Kliff and Owain has been around for a few days now, I haven’t gotten anything particularly special out of it. In fact the only five-star hero it gave me was a Gray — and while I can appreciate the thematic consistency, he’s no Kliff.

After summoning him, something deep down inside me said, “Jason. Save your orbs. It feels like we might be gearing up for a Sacred Stones banner sometime soon.”

So I did start to save my orbs.

We didn’t get a full Sacred Stones banner, but the game’s chief heroine has now arrived in a brand new light to justify my frugality.

But was she worth saving myself for? Well, only one way to find out.

Even though obviously the answer is yes.

Editor’s Note: On the last banner I tried to use shrunken photos to improve my media space consumption, but they were a little too small and came out blurry.

So I’m trying a medium size this time and hopefully it will look better. Again, sorry for the growing pains!

Grants Attack +3. If the numbers of foes within two spaces (excluding target) ≥ the number of allies within two spaces (excluding unit), grants Defense and Resistance +3 and Special Attack cooldown charge +1 per unit’s attack during combat (only highest value applied, does not stack).

Moonbow (Cooldown = 2)

Treats foe’s Defense and Resistance as if reduced by 30 percent during combat.

Attack/Speed Solo (A Skill)

If unit is not adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Speed +6 during combat.

At start of odd-numbered turns, grants Defense +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).

Legendary Eirika has an interesting synergy with her brother’s Legendary Hero variant. A synergy in that, while both are cavalry units (as per their ultimate forms in Sacred Stones), both also thrive when staying way the hell away from each other.

That Solo skill and her weapon’s effect makes her a unit whose primary purpose is to charge into battle on her own, slaying enemies with an accelerated Moonbow trigger that has extra boosted damage on account of the Lunar Brace.

Send her in on turns where she gets a defensive boost thanks to her C skill and Eirika reads like a force to be reckoned with on paper. Personally I even kind of prefer her Brace’s focus on improving damage output over Legendary Ephraim’s Solar Brace improving his vampirism.

Arguably the only real problem harming Eirika’s viability is the fact that sword-wielding cavalier is a field that’s very saturated all things being equal. Eldigan, Sigurd, variant Reinhardt, Brave Roy, Exalt Chrom…

And those are just the ones I own.

Personally I think Legendary Eirika would have been more impactful if they utilized the mage cavalier variant here instead of in her Anamnesis alt from the start of this year. Or honestly anything that could have helped her stand out a bit better.

Though that said, I fricken love Eirika and will sink all my orbs into summoning her no matter what. Hell her OG form is still my token unit and I’ve invested a lot into her, so Legendary girl will fit right in.

I’ll probably regret this decision when Neimi drops in the Sacred Stones exclusive banner next week… But that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I get there.

Also available on Legendary Eirika’s banner are:

Tana — Noble and Nimble

Olivia — Sky-High Dancer

Ephraim — Legendary Lord

Ninian — Bright-Eyed Bride

Sumia — Maid of Flowers

Lyn — Lady of the Wind

Sanaki — Apostle in White

Robin — Fell Reincarnation

Robin — Fell Vessel

Innes — Regal Strategician

Genny — Endearing Ally

My preferences for the supplemental summoning units this time around are rather simple.

In red, Olivia. In blue, Ninian. In green, Sanaki. In colorless, Genny.

Those are the four units I have not summoned before, with all the rest having joined my army already. In that respect the banner overall is a bit disappointing, as red is my major focus — with Tana being a sticking point. As much as I love her.

However, if nothing else I do appreciate the themeing. Having both Tana and Ephraim on Eirika’s banner was a smart choice, and both Grima variants being summonable is cool… Even if female Grima is very overplayed.

Now there is one more problem with this banner thus far…

The fact that I’ve blown through the 60 orbs I had already and pretty much summoned nothing.

Hell probably the only ‘useful’ unit I’ve gotten for myself is an extra Soleil, bringing me up to my 8th merge for her.

Should I do a post on my +10 merge project units at some point? I feel like that could be fun.

But that is also a discussion for another day. Because right now I need some extra orbs for my fix… And I think Eirika might have just what I need.

I usually don’t have too much to say about these Legendary Battle maps, and this time is no exception. The reinforcements arriving thing is never a fun mechanic, but otherwise this one seems better than some of the others we’ve seen before.

Plus, Lyn and Grima’s Legendary Battle maps return as well and I haven’t beaten the Infernal difficulty on either. So yay, orbs.

Please game just give me some orbs for Halloween.

So I know this probably isn’t the Halloween post you all would have expected out of me. But don’t fret, as I may just have Halloween things to talk about later today?

Who knows.

I certainly don’t because it’s 12:30 a.m. when I’m writing this. I just think it could be fun to do a ‘costumes I see around campus’ kind of post at the end of the day, as I’ll actually have a Halloween to enjoy this year sans Milo Yiannopoulos.

Which, by the way, it’s crazy that it has been a year since that whole debacle. That’s just also a story for another non-FEH post.

Thus I’ll leave you all with this: Why is Sacred Stones the best Fire Emblem game?

Kidding, you can disagree with that if you want. Just go ahead and think about the usual ‘who do you want to summon?’ and ‘who do you want to see next?’ kind of questions and get back to me if you want.

But honestly you should all just go enjoy Halloween. Do it for all the reporters covering nasty things who can’t this year. Because I certainly will.

P.S. — After I finished writing this and set it to publish, I got her with 15 orbs to spare.

Boy am I going to sleep happy tonight! And build a great Sacred Stones-themed team in the near future to boot~

Is it ironic to spend time making a whole blog post about all of the things that are distracting me from the things I have to do?

Or is it just stupid?

Well either way I don’t exactly have a lot to talk about until Legendary Eirika drops in Fire Emblem Heroes tomorrow so this is what you’re stuck with. By the way, I know nobody cares but I’m very excited to see her get some more love so prepare for that.

For now, however, that entire train of thought just serves as yet another distraction mucking up my productivity tonight.

Normally I work pretty well with some distractions going off in the background. Some music, a YouTube video, a group chat, whatever it may be. Unless I get really invested in the content, audio tends to help me focus more often than not.

But right now every little possible activity and thought is getting in the way of the one thing I actually need to do: Reading another article for my Evolution and Creation class tomorrow.

Some of those things are the general senses of dread and/or inspiration in the back of my mind. Including, but not limited to:

That exam I have next week.

Remembering a study date(?) I have for that exam before next week.

All of the work I’ve done running around to schedule my classes for next semester.

That armor set I want to build in Monster Hunter.

The fact that Shantae Half-Genie Hero is still on sale but I haven’t bought it yet.

An interesting idea I have for my novel where I might try to incorporate mirror reflection bs into the reveal of a character actually being a dragon? But that’s a whole other story.

So on and so forth.

As you can tell the ideas are fairly eclectic, but they’re also competing for space alongside other things like making sure dinner came out okay after Mom left it halfway through the process. Or catching up on a YouTube series.

Oh and let’s not forget about that nagging feeling in the back of my head that I should allocate some time to go to the gym tonight. Except it’s already close to 8:30 p.m. and I don’t know that I want to go to the gym this late, especially when I still have some homework to finish by tomorrow.

Also, if I went to the gym it would push off my window to write a blog post for the day further, and I’d really rather not avoid that if I can choose not to. Even if that means the idea I’m writing about might be hackneyed and silly.

But what hackneyed and silly blog post idea should I write about? I don’t know, how about I scroll through Twitter a little while I mull it over.

Sorry, what was that? I’ve been on Twitter for 15 minutes? How is that possible I don’t even enjoy that service that much, where did the time go?

…

In case it wasn’t obvious, yes, that tirade evolved into me actually just describing the process of how I came about this blog post idea stream-of-consciousness style.

Because obviously here I am writing instead of going to the gym or working on this homework assignment.

Yet even this distraction has distractions. Like my dad coming home, meaning I had to put my phone down to go move my car and let him in. Which then turned into sitting back and watching Bill Maher, as we are now.

So by virtue of T.V. time with dad and the fact that it’s 8:30 p.m., I might just skip the gym entirely until tomorrow.

I’ll just finish writing this and jump onto my assignment, try to focus on that hardcore.

With potential Monster Hunter time after. But that won’t be so much of a priority that it keeps me pulled away from my work more.

All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this distraction from a distraction that’s allowed me to realize what distraction I should move onto next. If it was a good distraction for you too, please feel free to let me know.

I’d like to believe I’m performing some sort of service with my hackneyed musings.

(Also be sure to come back tomorrow when I distract everyone further with more Fire Emblem stuff, okay? Okay. Cool.)

It’s hard not to argue that President Trump’s rhetoric has caused or at least perpetuated some issues for members of the press as well as the general public, so I was plenty willing to sign my name to the statement. Overall it actually made for a cool little coming together group moment that I haven’t gotten a lot of thanks to my asymmetrical schedule compared to the rest of the board people.

I’m just not entirely sure whether or not I can now take the statement and use it as an example of something I was involved with as an SPJ board member. Technically yes, my name is on it and it’s a statement by the board as a whole. But I didn’t really do a lot of work for it.

So if I put the editorial in my list of published stories, would that be weird? Should I make a separate category for things I’ve done as a part of SPJ and include this as a part of that page?

I won’t bore you all much longer with my meaningless internal debate about whether I can credit myself for being part of a group that does a thing.

To end this short post off, I also wanted to give a quick shout out to this issue of the Daily Titan as a whole. While I’ve been reading their stories on my own time, I obviously haven’t put as much energy into promoting the paper as a whole since I’m not on staff this semester. That doesn’t mean the story quality is any worse however, and they’re still worth giving props where it’s due.

For instance, I really like the Midterm voter guide this semester.

This first page has a great infographic map about voting locations around CSUF, and there’s more details within regarding the congressional races relevant to Fullerton and little blurbs on each of the California propositions.

It all looks really nice and is way more simple overall than some special issues I’ve been a part of in the past, which I would argue is really effective.

It’s funny. After spending three-or-four hours locked away writing this ten-page paper for my Mass Media Ethics class, I looked outside and thought it was so late that I missed my window to write something substantial on my blog.

But then I realized it’s only 7:00 p.m. (as of the point where I started writing anyway) despite looking like 11:00 p.m.

Welcome back Winter. How’s it going? Persephone doing alright down with Hades right now?

That’s good, that’s good.

All joking aside, I am actually pretty tired of writing after banging out an extensive essay on ethical philosophies when publishing graphic images in newspapers.

Plus I’m having a pretty fun time watching my dad get real annoyed at the T.V. while the Dodgers seem to be choking out during seventh inning of game five in the World Series.

So I won’t write too much here today. I’ll save some energy for another small Evolution and Creation paper I have to do next probably.

Certainly I won’t bore you all with the particulars of applying concepts like Utilitarianism and Communitarianism to national news publications — go ahead and watch NBC’s “The Good Place” if you want any of that. The show does it in a far more entertaining way than I could.

Instead I think I’ll briefly talk about my next “for fun” reading project. If you want to consider supplemental materials to help with my novel a “fun” book.

Professor Rizzo suggested I take a look at Roy Peter Clark’s book here as a way to pick up on some extra skills for more literary writing.

So far this kind of thing has been one of the early benefits of having a mentor for my Honors Project. Not only do I have an instructor to grade me in classes over the next year, someone who’s willing to read whatever I write and give me advice, but I have someone in my corner with a wealth of experience to be able to recommend books and connections that may help my writing in the long run.

It’s super cool, and I eagerly ran off to Amazon to pick this sucker up after she mentioned it last Tuesday.

Now that is has finally arrived, I’m excited to crack it open and see what I can learn. Thought that was worth sharing with the world, at the very least on the off-chance that you too are looking for some supplemental materials to help with whatever you might be writing.

However I’ll have to personally broach the subject another day, because for now I’m off to homework land once again.

I was a little lukewarm about writing something for the ol’ blog today. Pretty much my whole arc of experiences has included doing homework and recovering from staying up so late to watch the 18 inning Dodgers/Red Sox game last night.

Because yeah, I watch sports once in a while. Luckily I just happened to be watching a sport when a record-breaking game did its thing.

But even if I like baseball more than pretty much any other sport, I don’t think I can write about that for extended periods of time.

Pretty much why I’m not a sports writer.

In terms of homework, I did an assignment about infographics for my Visual Communications class, read a few pieces on the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education court case for my Evolution and Creation class, sent out some emails to professors (alongside some work emails for Gladeo) and spent some time trying to come up with a title for my Honors project.

None of that felt particularly enlightening to write about here, though.

So my only other real option was possibly writing about the fact that I’m going to be getting an award real soon as I found out via Twitter and the Daily Titan advisor Bonnie yesterday.

Yet even there it doesn’t feel like the right time to go around and say ‘hey go check out the thing that’s getting an award.’ I’ll probably do that around the time when I actually go to an awards ceremony.

Assuming that’s a thing that will happen sometime soon.

With all those dead ends in mind, I took a break, ate some food, went to the gym and showered. As always, going to the gym seemed to spark some inspiration on what to write.

Guess I’m as much of a proponent of the gym being a good chance to relax and clear your thoughts as anyone now? For as weird as that is to say.

But to be fair, it wasn’t actually the exercise itself that brought about some inspiration. Rather it was the homework that I continued to do while I was power walking on a treadmill.

Because you know. I’m lame like that.

One assignment I’ve been pushing off is picking an image to examine for my Visual Comm class’s final paper. The professor gave us a pre-determined list so I had to pick something off of it. While looking through the list of images at the gym, I stumbled across this gem that will definitely be what I write my paper on:

Just look at this 1950s 7-Up ad. It’s phenomenal. I’m not even sure where to begin talking about it.

Actually that’s not true, the obvious place to start is with the giant baby, an 11-month-old kid drinking a soda bottle as though it were milk. Not only is it a funny image, but it’s also a pretty striking one thanks to the color contrast.

Oh but that’s not all. I hope you read through the text on this sucker too, because if you did I’m sure you’ll see why I love it so much.

First off there’s an ad for a totally different T.V. show just slapped in next to the baby’s arm for some reason.

Then on the bottom-left corner, where the bottle is among a collection of other children’s toys, the advertisers recommend you “avoid imitations,” completely lacking the foresight to know that in the future everyone just calls everything of that nature Sprite anyway.

But most important is the larger block of text which advocates for, and I quote, “Add(ing) 7-Up to the (toddler’s) milk in equal parts” because it’s a “wholesome combination.”

That’s fucking astounding in just how genuine they are in advocating such a disgusting act for new mothers to immediately get their children hooked on shitty flavored carbonation water.

And I absolutely love it.

It’s just such a product of its time that I’m actually really looking forward to writing about the image for my essay. So much so that I thought it would be worth writing my blog post today about it so I can spread the gospel to you, my loving readers.

As an additional note, I did also want to point out that if I wasn’t picking the 7-Up ad, I would have gone with this ad for fancy ties:

I don’t think I really need to say why. Just the idea that getting a nice tie is justification for obscene misogyny (and making your wife love that same misogyny because it’s a ‘man’s world’) is such a great little time capsule.

Plus there probably would have been a lot to say about exactly what the implications are when you have your wife get down on her knees for something as innocuous as handing off breakfast in bed.

Because come on, look at his face. You know what he’s thinking.

But I digress, because soda baby spoke to me way more and I’m going with it.

P.S. — Just consider this post an open call for any other crazy old ads that could never have been made today with this kind of 50s aesthetic, because I think they’re amazing and would love to see more. Kay? Thanks.

Now that I’ve finally registered for my spring 2019 classes, I can relax and focus on the important things.

Like stressing about all the loose ends and hectic maneuvering in the classes I’m planning on taking.

Yeah, things went a bit worse than I had expected them to. That kept me busy this morning. Busy enough to push off the Gladeo meeting I was going to run.

Part of that came as a result of the classes that I know I’m taking but can’t sign up for just yet. Mostly pertaining to my Comm internship class, which I won’t have an invite code for until Monday, and my Honors Project independent study class that I can’t actually sign up for until I have my proposal signed by the Honors Program Director.

But at least those two are essentially both on a limitless availability. They’re independent study courses and won’t be filling up anytime soon. A fact which is particularly helpful in regards to the honors class because I still need one more detail to complete my proposal:

I have no idea what to call my project.

Yeah, I know it’s just a “working title” and the decision shouldn’t matter in the long-run because it can change at any time.

But being presented with the opportunity to provide even a preliminary name made me realize that I have no idea what I want to call my book. Guess I might just call it “fantasy novel” or something just to have what I need, but I appreciate having a couple extra days to think it over.

Those soon-to-be-fixed issues aren’t the only things that made registration complicated this morning.

I had been interested in taking a film criticism class with my current Visual Communications professor. It sounded really fun when he pitched it in-class earlier this semester.

But then I tried to sign up for it and found out he neglected to tell us that a prerequisite course was required. A course that is not being offered next semester.

So it seemed like that was a bust, though I emailed him asking about it just in case. Figured it was worth a shot, I’m just not holding my breath.

Instead I decided to sign up for a vaguely similar Honors World Cinema class.

Nothing wrong with finding out a bit more about foreign films, right? It was early enough in the morning that I was able to slip right in too, as there were only eight seats in the class.

But then… Things changed. Again.

My friend Mimi pointed out that there’s a video games in American culture class being offered next semester.

That’s literally right up my alley.

So I dropped world cinema and picked up a 400-level American Studies course instead. Don’t know if that’s going to be a mistake, but if it is it’ll at least be a mistake I’m jumping into with someone I know.

Plus it’s a video game-related class, so it definitely won’t be a mistake either way.

While that essentially sums up my drama this morning, I’m going to hold off on doing a full schedule examination post until later. I at least want to make sure my whole workload is worked out explicitly before I talk about it in detail.

At this point I just know that my overall schedule is going to be pretty bizarre. So look forward to hearing some more about that down the line!

For all intents and purposes, this morning has kind of been a bust. I’m going to spend a good chunk of this post complaining before getting to the fun Starbucks bit, as a fair warning.

I woke up extra early today, around 6:00 a.m. or so, that way I could commute to campus and show up for 8:00 a.m. walk-in hours at the Communications advising center. I’ve already complained about that and referenced it twice after, so I’ll yadda yadda that and send you over to my complaining post for further details.

If you aren’t interested in reading that post, and I wouldn’t blame you considering you’re probably here for Starbucks stories thanks to the title of this post, basically all you need to know is I had one question about the application of something in my planned schedule next semester that I was going to take regardless. A really quick, little question that I couldn’t get answered with an appointment because they were all booked up for the next month or whatever.

Figured if I showed up at the beginning of walk-in hours today it would be fine.

Boy I sure am glad I commuted to campus at 8 a.m. this morning so I could ask an advisor one question during walk-in hours only to still be sitting here waiting at 9:30.

Turned out even with my early commute I was the fourth or fifth person in line and everyone is allowed 20 minutes at most. Many people needed that full 20 minutes, as it turns out.

Adding insult to that injury, my question wound up being negligible anyway. Apparently the collateral category I was interested in applying this class to goes away once I complete my minor in Psychology.

Which is something I was made aware could be the case via the internship coordinator on Monday.

So I guess I got confirmation that it is, in fact, the case… But the nearly two-hour wait certainly didn’t feel justified to get that confirmation.

Oh but that’s not all, I also had some salt rubbed into that injury which was subsequently insulted. By the time I got my Comm advising, the office hours of my Psych professor were basically over so I couldn’t go there. Then it turned out the Honors Program Director isn’t around until next week because she’s at a conference, so I wasn’t able to have my project proposal signed off and finalized.

Basically. Getting up super early this morning was a bust. Don’t feel super justified doing it.

That ends the “let me complain about things that annoyed me on my personal blog” portion of my post, though.

Because the fun Starbucks-focused thing you all probably jumped on this train to hear about came while I went to get a drink and drown my annoyance.

Now there are a few caveats I need to elaborate as scene setters.

The Starbucks I went to is on the ground floor of the Pollak Library here at CSUF. It’s kind of the most central point on campus so it’s a very busy spot.

By 10:00 a.m. or so, the lineup to get coffee was long and the place was booming.

After ordering my drink I popped one headphone in and continued listening to a podcast I started during that two-hour wait.

Mostly Nitpicking, the podcast put on by that YouTuber I love Nando V. Movies, for anyone curious. It’s great and you should be listening.

BUT ANYWAY. Point is I might not have been the most cognizant of my surroundings.

Even so, I swear to god this is true. While waiting for my order to get thrown onto the counter I saw one girl attract the attention of a barista. She leaned in, mumbled “Order 66,” and the barista got the most solemn look on her face as she nodded, turned around and went to the back room.

Being the nerdy loser I am, the only way I could have possibly took that was in the framework of the Star Wars prequels.

Like now I’m totally convinced some random customer at Starbucks is secretly Emperor Palpatine and all of the younglings in the back room of the coffee shop have been chopped up by future Darth Vader barista.

There’s absolutely no other way to interpret that scene.

Especially not one that involves the mobile order Barista Vader brought out a few seconds later.

Total coincidence.

…

Yeah, that’s the whole story. Don’t know if you think it was underwhelming after spending a chunk of this reading about a guy complaining about his first world problem of getting up early for no reason, but I personally thought it was hilarious.

Probably in good part due to the aforementioned lack of sleep and general annoyance.

Figured if nothing else it would make for a good blog post to write and fill the extra three-hour time gap before my first class at 1:00 p.m.

So I hope you too feel that reading this was a good use of your extra time.

Nothing like the smell of a fresh Fire Emblem Heroes banner in the morning.

This Brave Redux banner, essentially a rehash of the Farfetched Units idea from last year, immediately holds a very special place in my heart. Because it is quite literally the definition of a ‘cuck my friend Jonathan’ banner.

For years he has been asking Intelligent Systems to add Kliff into the game. Plus, he and my friend Mitchell always joke about Loki being great for her…

Two large personalities. If you catch my drift.

So between those two being together and Owain, one of the best units from Awakening, joining in… Well let’s just say we had a great time laughing about how many orbs we were going to waste on this one when the trailer dropped.

But of course the trailer is only half the story. Are these three new Brave units worth summoning?

Loki — The Trickster

Skill Set:

Thökk (Might = 14, Range = 2)

Calculates damage from staff like other weapons. At start of the turn, if foe’s Health ≤ unit’s Health +3 and foe is in cardinal directions and uses a bow, dagger, magic or staff, foe cannot move more than one space through its action.

When healing an ally with a staff, grants Defense and Resistance +6 to all allies for one turn.

C Duel Infantry (A Skill)

Grants Health +5. If unit is five-star rarity and level 40 and unit’s stats total is less than 170, treats unit’s stats as 170 in modes like Arena (Higher-scoring opponents will appear. Stat total calculation excludes any values added by merges and skills).

Odd Attack Wave (C Skill)

At start of odd-numbered turns, grants Attack +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).

Analysis:

While it’s fun seeing Intelligent Systems add another original-to-Heroes character into our summoning pool, I’d be lying if I said Loki was anything but the least valuable unit on this banner for me personally.

Her special weapon and signature ‘Restore’ Movement Assist are great selling points in conjunction with Odd Attack Wave, as they encourage Loki to stay near her allies to cure their status ailments and boost their power.

However, beyond that she also has that A skill I don’t really understand and… Well… The other two units on this banner are special.

Before combat this unit initiates, foes in a wide area around target take damage equal to (unit’s Attack minus foe’s Defense or Resistance).

Fortress Def/Res (A Skill)

Grants Defense and Resistance +6. Inflicts Attack -2.

Chill Speed (B Skill)

At start of turn, inflicts Speed -7 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Speed through its next action.

Fortify Resistance (C Skill)

At start of turn, grants Resistance +4 to adjacent allies for one turn.

Analysis:

It’s been 83 years, but we finally have a brand new Fire Emblem Echoes unit in Heroes. Not on its own banner with, say, Silque… But pickers can’t be choosers.

We can finally finish a full collection of the Ram villagers, and that’s worth Kliff being here.

Even if I’m personally uncomfortable not seeing him as an archer when that was his amazing niche in my playthrough of the game.

At least in Heroes Kliff’s unique weapon gives him a different interesting niche to fill. When coming into battle with a lower attack stat, he gets buffed in all of his stats. Throw on a different Special Attack and one of the extra Fortress Sacred Seals and he might honestly be a force to be reckoned with. Plus his design is sweet and that always helps.

But also replace that C skill. As you’ll see with Owain coming up next, only Loki got a good deal in the C department.

Even if Kliff is a rare Echoes unit that I’m intrigued in summoning, Owain probably takes the cake as the most interesting build on this banner for me.

Except for the fact that he’s yet another strong sword infantry unit. There are so many of them.

But Owain stands out in that his preferred play style seems to be working alongside other characters. He gains an Attack and Defense boost thanks to that bond, as well as a stronger Special Attack trigger (up to 35 damage thanks to Wrath). I love the idea of playing him closely linked to a supported ally, perhaps with a different C skill. One of the Attack waves perhaps?

Also. Just. He’s Owain.

He’s a goofball and his aching blood shuttering hand over face pose is god damn iconic. He’s pretty much the sole reason I love the very similar Gladeon in Pokémon Sun and Moon.

By all intents and purposes he’s also far better than Odin. So bring me my Owain, Intelligent Systems.

Normally this is the segment where I would post something about my summoning luck.

I would if my luck on this banner thus-far wasn’t nonexistent.

So far I’ve gotten an extra Eirika to merge, then a five-star Gray showed up to ruin a 3.75 percent summoning streak.

I’m a bit peeved at that, almost entirely because Gray is not the Ram villager we’re looking for.

I also wasted a good 60 orbs getting there, so I’m hovering at about 20 or so right now. Probably not going to spend any more for a while, but we’ll see.

Certainly the paralogue story orbs should be encouraging, right?

Perfect segue as always.

Editor’s Note:I’m trying my new smaller photo upload system on this post, so if the images are hard to see just consider this an experiment that I’ll rectify next time Heroes releases a banner.

Like… Next week at this rate.

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Alright I’ll level with you. This is probably the most underwhelming Paralogue we’ve had in a while. Especially considering we just finished doing Halloween business.

It starts with the Order once again remarking that Brave Heroes have arrived.

Along with Alfonse, again, making a comment about how strange it is that the people of our world for some reason decided to ask for one of the game’s major villains as a Brave Hero.

Which also is somewhat confusing in that Veronica was a totally novel unit in her Brave banner but Loki isn’t?

Then again the Farfetched Units were not unique either. They were just characters from their games.

So I’m really not sure what the formula is here, Intelligent Systems.

All I know is that Loki’s first arrival is alongside future Grand Hero Battle fodder Aversa from Awakening. And they’re basically the exact same character:

Except that Aversa is like Loki blended together with Tharja, and Loki herself has no soul according to Aversa. She says the healer gives off the same aura as Grima which…

Yeah is pretty damning.

Yet, as much as I do like seeing these two play off of each other, they pale in comparison when you throw Owain and Kliff in the same room. I’m just going to show you the main chunk of their exchange, it’s that good.

Is it weird if I ship these two about an hour after they were introduced into the same universe?

Because I’m definitely up for doing that.

However once the Order of Heroes arrives at the final battle, it’s just kind of standard fair. They all riff on the ideas presented previously, you fight and afterwards they all say they’d be happy to join your team.

Even if apparently they aren’t because all I got was a lousy, stinkin’ Gray.

C’mon Gray, why’d you have to play me like that.

If this post overall sounds a little low-energy, I’d blame the fact that I decided to finish writing it at 2:00 a.m. instead of just waiting for the normal morning hours like I had intended to.

What can I say, the muse came to me.

Speaking of that muse, I know this post goes a good 300 words or so over the self-imposed limit that I mentioned talking to my friend Spencer about… But honestly I feel like these Fire Emblem posts are sort of the exception to that rule.

First, because I’m the only one who reads them.

But also because easily a good 400 or so words are spend just copying the skill descriptions? And those are a necessary evil, less so me giving my thoughts and opinions.

So… Loophole. Yeah.

But anyway, I’m really tired and want to wrap this up. Let me know what you think of the new Brave Heroes in the comments, or somewhere else on the internet!

Personally still hoping that Sacred Stones units are next on the docket… Though less so now that I’ve spent too many orbs just to get Gray.

It isn’t quite the same kind of busy as I was during midterms a few weeks back, this time my responsibilities are a bit more external.

On Friday I have to register for spring 2019 classes. However, in order to be prepared for that, I have to meet with half a dozen people.

I sat down with the Communications internship coordinator this afternoon when I was done with class.

Tomorrow I’m going to Professor Rizzo’s office hours so I can show her all of the material for my honors project (and hopefully get a proposal signed off on so I can sign up for different classes I need).

At least then I’ll be able to try and meet my Learning and Memory professor during his office hours to get some more clear feedback on my essay.

I potentially don’t have anything extraneous on Thursday, but that might be the day I meet with my Mass Media Ethics partner for a presentation we have to give next week.

Finally, Friday is a Gladeo meeting day and, as I mentioned, the day I’m officially signing up for next semester’s classes.

It’s all a bit of a time crunch with a ton of moving parts and I’m a bit on-edge.

Then let’s not forget about the other balls I’m juggling. For instance, homework.

The bane of students everywhere.

I also have to try and work out future internship hiring stuff for Gladeo with Michelle at some point in the near future per suggestions made by the internship coordinator. Both so I can have my work apply toward required internship credits and so we can encourage more reporter interns to come work with us.

On top of that I’ve also been working on different summer 2019 internship applications given the deadline for many of them is November 1.

Put together the extensive application for the Boston Globe yesterday. Now that’s floating around in the aether alongside the Washington Post.

I’m not expecting anything of course, but I am anxiously holding my breath.

Plus let’s not forget my other personal pursuits that I’d like to slip in somewhere within that timeframe.

Like finishing my newest armor set in Monster Hunter.

Or possibly buying Shantae Half-Genie Hero, which I saw is on sale right now thanks to the WayForward twitter.

There are just a lot of balls in the air right now. Being able to list them all out here on the blog does help me relax a little, both because it’s keeping track of my responsibilities and because it’s just fun, stress-free writing practice.

But you can essentially take this post as my fair warning that I might be a little more quiet the next couple days, as I’m literally running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

…

Except for maybe tomorrow when a new Fire Emblem Heroes banner drops. I’ll probably have a post about that.

Last year I didn’t really have a proper Halloween. All of the oxygen was sucked out of that particular room by Milo Yiannopolous visiting Cal State Fullerton, which wound up being a massive, exhausting reporting project that I was the lead on.

Nobody around campus got to have a real Halloween that year. As great as it was getting lost in that world, it was a shame that I didn’t get to dress up or do any of that fun, traditional spooky stuff.

As a result I’m a bit out-of-practice when it comes to doing things like pulling together costumes.

So when my friend Mimi invited me to come to a Halloween party tonight, I panicked over how to dress.

And by panicked I mean I got really busy with school and didn’t bother pulling anything new together. Instead I just reused my costume from two years ago and came as the esteemed Willy Wonka.

Here I am with Mimi, also apparently reusing an old costume. Also, please note the god of partying noshing on some meatballs in the background. Because he was awesome.

Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka of course. I put this thing together two years ago after he passed away, and I’m impressed I still somewhat fit into the women’s size pimp-purple coat that I dug out of a thrift store.

I’m kind of writing this in the corner of the party while waiting for my turn at Mario Kart, so I won’t be too verbose. But I figure I should highlight some of the fun things here because it’s a cool little shindig.

For instance, the aforementioned drunk Mario Kart.

I’m not personally drunk because I have a long drive home after this, but basically everyone else is fucked up on every kind of alcohol under the sun.

And we’re playing Mario Kart.

For some reason a decision was made to start the game at the hardest difficulty while playing a Rainbow Road race.

First off, I have to say, it’s incredible that that’s the decision everyone collectively came to. But also it was just plain hilarious watching everyone struggle through it while inebriated.

(I personally got fourth place as my girl Rosalina while everyone else was 10-12, so I got to flex my sober video game muscles a little)

Jackbox came in later, but for me Mario Kart at a massive party full of people who aren’t purely nerds was way more surprising.

Also on the list of party attractions was the food, of course. Mimi put together a lovely spread of chips, candy and cheeses for people to soak up that alcohol with.

Plus there were these lovely cupcakes:

Note the meatballs in the background, also prepared by Mimi and made famous by our God friend.

Very Halloween-y.

Naturally the costumes are also very important to discuss. Someone is wearing a dragon made out of a cardboard box, and her boyfriend is dressed as Daenerys from Game of Thrones.

There are at least two one-pieces in the room, a cheetah and a Stormtrooper.

It’s a very interesting, eclectic mix that I don’t exactly feel comfortable taking a larger photo of. So maybe check my social media stuff in case I like some pictures Mimi puts out or whatever.

Oh yeah, also there’s a cat. A very sweet cat with big ol’ eyes. Animals are always welcome at a party.

Even though I’m basically meeting everyone at this place tonight, I’d say it’s been a great time! Certainly a wonderful distraction from my Mass Media Ethics assignment and preparing for class registration.

But that said, I’m going to get back to the festivities. I’d wish everyone a happy Halloween, but we’re still a bit early for that.